Maduro says he's open to talks with Trump but won't comment on U.S. strike on Venezuelan dock

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said he was open to negotiating with the United States to combat drug trafficking.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said he is open to negotiating with Washington to combat drug trafficking in the first sign that sustained U.S. pressure is taking its toll on the embattled South American leader.

“The U.S. government knows, because we’ve told many of their spokespeople, that if they want to seriously discuss an agreement to combat drug trafficking, we’re ready,” Maduro said in a taped interview aired Thursday on state TV channel teleSUR.

But in his wide-ranging conversation with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet, he declined to comment on an alleged ground attack on a docking facility along Venezuela’s shoreline last month, which some media reports said was conducted by the CIA.

The spy agency declined to comment on the reports it was behind what would be the first-known land attack on Venezuela by the U.S. The CIA rarely, if ever, publicly acknowledges its work.

But President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. had “knocked out” a facility tied to Venezuela. “We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said in the interview. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”